The present invention relates to a method of providing a non-blocking routing network having a primary level with n primary nodes and a secondary level with N≧n secondary nodes and an intermediate level with s intermediate nodes.
A routing network usually consists of at least a primary level having n primary nodes and a secondary level having N secondary nodes. The routing network can establish a link between any primary node and an arbitrary secondary node. In a first approach, this is accomplished by physically connecting each of the n primary nodes to each of the N secondary nodes, which represents the trivial solution requiring n*N physical connections. This trivial solution is obviously non-blocking.
In a second approach, intermediate levels are added to the routing network. With these intermediate levels, it is possible to reduce the number of physical connections compared to the trivial solution while still being able to establish a link between any primary node and an arbitrary secondary node. It is also possible to provide non-blocking routing networks with intermediate levels, but the transmission delay for transferring data from a primary node to a secondary node over a link increases with the number of intermediate levels.